Equityb Flashcards
Research Support
-Evidence to support the importance of…….. comes from Kurdek & Schmitt (1986).
-investigated relationship quality in
185 couples; each couple was cohabiting but fell into two of four categories: married or not
married, and heterosexual or same-sex partners.
-Using individually completed questionnaires, they found greater relationship satisfaction was strongly associated with the perception of type and quantity of benefits in the current relationship (CL) and seeing alternative relationships as less attractive than the current relationship (CLalt).
-This research not only supports social exchange theory as an explanation of romantic
relationships, but also shows that the factors which predict satisfaction are the same in different types of relationships, giving further credibility to the theory.
Operationalisation of costs and benefits
-problem which challenges social exchange theory as an explanation for relationships is the difficulty in deciding what constitutes a cost and a benefit.
-Rather than being fixed entities, they are often fluid or perceived differently by different people.
-e.g. what one person may perceive as a benefit (e.g. attention)
another person may view as an irritation.
-Furthermore, Littlejohn (1989) suggested what may be perceived as a cost or benefit at one stage of a relationship, may alter at a different stage of the relationship.
-For example, the benefit of a ‘fun-loving’ partner becomes the cost of an
‘immature’ partner.
-These issues suggest it is almost impossible to decide the satisfaction of a relationship by the ‘costs’ and the ‘benefits’ as these factors are simply too difficult to operationalise and measure, thus social exchange theory is seriously undermined.
Real-world application:
-One practical application of social exchange theory is its usefulness
in couples’ therapy.
-Gottman and Levenson (1992) found a major difference between satisfied and unsatisfied marriages was the ratio of positive to negative exchanges.
-In satisfied marriages, for every negative exchange there were five positive exchanges whereas in
unhappy marriages this ratio was one to one or less.
-Integrated Behavioural Couples Therapy utilises the principles of social exchange theory, it serves to increase the number of positive
exchanges and decrease the number of negative exchanges within a relationship.
This helps
partners to break negative patterns and leads to a more satisfying relationship.
-This demonstrates how social exchange theory can be applied to help improve troubled relationships.
